James Rabbit’s Perfect Waves (download it for free!)

This time last year I was living in Santa Cruz’s Crystal Palace with, among other people, my good friend John Tyler Martin–the mastermind behind the sesame-street-new-wave band/home-recording project, James Rabbit. I was playing the part of bass player for the group at the time. We’d just gotten home from an awesome tour with the amazing Da Bears, and were continuing the process of recording a new album entitled Perfect Waves. We’d boarded up one of the front doors to our house to better sound proof it, and for months our “music room” was the Perfect Waves recording studio.

If you don’t know James Rabbit, it’s timethatyoudo. Tyler’s recorded 40+ albums in 10 years, in his bedrooms, with his friends. He writes elaborate, sincere, meaningful, positive pop albums, each of which he has given away. The two previous albums, Colosusses and Coloratura were both exciting and new in their own ways. The former was a fabulous set of concise pop songs recorded over a layer of pots and pans. The latter was a triumphant and heartfelt ode to the importance of friends.

Perfect Waves is the most recent; it came out this year on the first day of spring. Here’s a video we put together last winter with footage from the recording process over clips from the album.

It’s a 20-song journey. It’s distinctly James Rabbit, but also breaks new ground once again. The best way I can describe it is sophisti-pop. It’s a mix of pop, new wave, indie, with bits jazz, funk, African music, musical.

The fidelity is the best of any James Rabbit album hereto, and I’m very proud of having a hand in that, especially the bass tone. It was magic how it came together. For the final EQ we analyzed a Dexys Midnight Runners song and matched that.